08. Sugar, oh honey honey
Do you know where sugar comes from?
Welcome to the Roll with it Newsletter.
To all of you new here, thanks so much for joining me on this little baking adventure. I’m still amazed and very grateful you are all reading my work. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Today let’s make things a lil’ bit sweet by chatting about sugar. This little bitesized nugget of information should help us with our recipe on Sunday.
To help get us in the mood, I asked my Dad to put together a playlist for us. Shout out to my Dad! You can listen to this here.
Stick it on and let’s get into it.
Cissy… xo
Sugar has been an important commodity for many centuries. Once an expensive treat for the wealthy, it is now a cheap, accessible ingredient that we have become completely addicted to, but d’ya actually know where it comes from?
Well…
Most of the sugar we sweeten our food with is extracted from either sugarcane or sugar beet. Both processes involve precise and scientific operations achieved through huge manufacturing operations. But before we had these, humans used honey and dried fruits to sweeten food - so things have been sweet for bloody years!
Sugarcane is a bamboo-like grass that is grown on plantations in the tropics and subtropics. These take around 1 to 2 years to grow to full height. Once tall enough the cane is cut just above the soil either by hand or by a harvester. It is cut like this as it is a perennial crop (meaning it doesn’t need to be replanted each year). The cane is then transported to a sugarcane mill where the cane juice is extracted, purified, filtered and crystallised.
Sugarbeet is a root crop that looks like a large turnip and is grown in temperate parts of the world, including the UK and Ireland (however it hasn’t been commercially grown here since the early 2000s). Sucrose is found in the root of the plant so it is topped and sent to a factory where it is then sliced, boiled, filtered and crystallised.
What types of sugars are there?
Sugar (or sucrose) often comes in many forms, including white sugars such as caster, cubed and icing. As well as soft brown sugar, muscovado, demerara and invert sugars like honey and glucose. But why are they different?
‘Well, duh! They’re different colours Cissy!’ you might be thinking. Yes, you’re right but this is all down to the way the cane is processed. White sugars are highly refined, meaning they undergo a lengthy process of filtration which helps achieve pure white sugar granules. During this process (crushing, juicing and boiling of the sugarcane) a thick, dark syrup is left behind. This is called molasses. Molasses is what gives sugar it’s dark brown colour. On it’s own molasses can be used as a liquid sugar but it is also added back into white sugars to create soft brown sugars. (Have i said the word sugar enough yet!?)
Other sugars such as muscovado, panela and jaggery are much less refined than white sugars. They contain some (very very small) amounts of vitamins and minerals which aren’t present in refined white sugar and they tend to have a more complex flavour profile that is rich and toffee like.
Sugar can also come in other forms such as fructose (fruit sugar), dextrose (corn syrup), maltose (malt syrup and lactose (milk) - basically anything with an ‘ose’ on the end of it. As well as from maple and birch trees and from nectar gathered by flower bees.
How do we use sugar?
Besides giving us energy, mouthfeel and pleasure, sugar is an important function that goes beyond being a sweetener. In baking, sugar does some of the following:
Helps incorporate air into fat when creaming batters
Feeds yeast, making it grow and ferment
Helps caramelise and give products a dark colour
Helps preserve fruits
Stabilises beaten eggs
Disrupts the coagulation of egg proteins in custard
Tenderizes gluten in flour
Helps develop a smooth ice cream texture
The list could go on…
The problem with sugar?
There is of course a huge debate surrounding sugar, particularly the negative effects it has on our health, but also its history, its environmental footprint and its ethical accountability.
Unfortunately, the market has dictated how we buy sugar and at what cost. To move forward it’s important to find solutions that can help growers, farmers and millers. To do this we should consider buying sugar from direct sources, buying raw or unrefined sugars (such as panela and jaggery), using sugar as a flavour (not a sweetener) and using alternatives such as honey. Just to be clear, I’m definitely no angel and do sometimes buy sugars in a nonchalant way but as I learn more about the ingredient I hope to treat it in the same way I would locally grown and milled flour.
To help you think about how you buy your next bag of sugar, I recommend sinking your teeth into the below for some helpful (and sometimes a bit scary / shocking) info.
A Sweet Deal: Rotten, Netflix
Explained: Sugar, Netflix
The history of growing sugar beet in Ireland
… xo